Viral Hack For How Procrastinating Students Can Avoid Missing A Deadline Divides TikTok

With final exams finally in the rearview mirror, students have just resurfaced from a kind of cave.

The last few weeks undoubtedly pushed them to consume absurd amounts of salty snacks, perform impressive logical leaps and inner monologues to justify procrastinating, and who knows just how many sleep cycles have likely devolved into pure chaos.

And of course, the students discovered some tricks of the trade along the way.

One finals week hack posted to TikTok, this one particularly aimed at the procrastinators out there, apparently hit home for plenty of people. It netted over eight million views and prompted plenty of commentary.

The clip, one of many study hacks shared by TikToker EasyA, showed viewers what they "shouldn't" do to buy a little extra time when they're facing a looming deadline and still not quite finished—or haven't even started.

In short, students can send a file to a website that will "corrupt" the file. Students can then send the corrupted file to a teacher, making it look like an honest effort to turn in an assignment.

But of course, the teacher can't open the file.

Plenty of TikTokers were thrilled to put this in the back pocket for their next finals week.

Jimmy Neutron/TikTok

daddy ricx/TikTok

Kenneth/TikTok

Many others were already well aware of the trick.

Vrax/TikTok

Muskrat/TikTok

The Dopamine/TikTok

Gage Riley/TikTok

But others weren't so enthusiastic.

They felt there was a better, more fool proof option.

Apurva Patel/TikTok

Kaemen [Came-In]/TikTok

Formerly DaBaby Appreciator/TikTok

The unfortunate irony is that for all the people excited to have discovered the trick, it may not work from now on anyway.

After all, there must be at least a few professors in those eight million views.